As
Sergeant Schultz always deflected on Hogan's Heroes, "I know
nothing!" On Wednesday Al Gore, who last year boasted about how he
"took the initiative in creating the Internet," denied any
knowledge of how his subpoenaed e-mails were lost by conceding, during a
Fox News Channel interview, "I'm not an expert on computers."

The background: Late
last week, in a disclosure bannered across the front page of the June 9
Washington Times, but which was nearly completely ignored by the
television media, the White House claimed that a problem with its computer
back-up system meant e-mail sent to Gore's office between March 1998 and
April 1999 could not be retrieved. No network show touched the revelation
on Thursday or Friday. On Sunday, Tony Snow raised the development with
Dan Burton on Fox News Sunday and Burton mentioned it on Meet the Press,
but Tim Russert did not pursue the comment.

Now back to Wednesday,
June 14: On FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume reporter Wendell Goler
narrated a piece which provided excerpts from his interview earlier in the
day with Gore. Following a report on nuclear data missing from Los Alamos,
Hume segued to Goler's re-cap of an earlier interview:
"Vice President Gore meanwhile has had some
missing data of his own to deal with, that year's worth of e-mails that
were somehow not preserved and that investigators would like to see. Fox
News White House correspondent Wendell Goler asked him about that and
other things in an interview from Scranton, Pennsylvania where Gore was
campaigning. Well Wendell, what did you get?"

Goler relayed live from
Washington, DC: "Brit, the guy who says he helped invent the Internet
says he's not a computer whiz, at least not enough to have picked up on
the fact that e-mails to his office weren't being saved in 1998 and
1999. Congressional investigators say those e-mails might have shed light
on Gore's involvement a number of their investigations, but in his first
broadcast comments on the subject Gore told Fox News that all he knew was
that the system briefly broke down."
Gore, hemmed and hawed on tape via satellite: "The
problem I asked about was three days of e-mails that disappeared [nervous
chuckle] and computers crash and that's what happened and I asked them
to make sure it didn't happen again. [pauses and shrugs] And I don't
know about the back-up tapes. I read about that in the papers recently. I
don't know anything about why that happened or, [hesitating and shaking
his head] or how it happened. I'm not an expert on computers."

Goler moved on to other
subjects Gore is more used to talking about, such bashing Bush's tax
cuts and the Los Alamos mess, but Gore was clearly uncomfortable in
responding to the question about e-mail -- probably because no other
reporter has queried him about the matter.

CNN, for instance,
avoided the topic in its interview with Gore replayed on Wednesday's
Inside Politics. Early in the show CNN showed Gore responding to a couple
of questions from Jeanne Meserve about his campaign having to move a
Pennsylvania event out of a Catholic hospital because a local Catholic
leader objected to Gore's abortion stand. Later, viewers saw a nearly
six-minute long excerpt of the interview, but not a word from Meserve
about e-mail or his rental house. Instead, she asked about his efforts to
gain credit for the good economy, if the surplus provides a rationale for
Bush's tax cut, if the Los Alamos mess means Bill Richardson is off the
VP list, and if he considers Ralph Nader a threat.

Gore's Internet
invention claim came during a March 9, 1999 interview with CNN's Wolf
Blitzer on Late Edition/Prime Time. Blitzer didn't offer any challenge
when Gore bragged: "During my service in the United States Congress I
took the initiative in creating the Internet." To watch this exchange
via a RealPlayer clip, go to the March 12, 1999 CyberAlert:http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/1999/cyb19990312.asp#6

Al
Gore has yet to complete his promised repairs to his tenant's home, WTVF-TV
reported, but only FNC noticed. On the June 14 Special Report with Brit
Hume, the anchor of the same name related an item highlighted in Hotline:
"Vice President Gore's Tennessee tenant says her
toilet still won't flush and her kitchen floor isn't fixed either
despite a visit from the plumber last week and Gore's promise that
repairs would be made immediately. Tracy Mayberry, who rents a house on
Gore's farm in Carthage, Tennessee, told Nashville's channel 5 that
Gore also reneged on his promise of other housing while the work was done.
Gore's office said it's had troubling finding people to do the work
but that it will be done this week."

Meanwhile, the rest of
the media continue to make sure as few people as possible ever hear about
how far Gore let his neighboring house deteriorate.

This week's MRC
MagazineWatch, about the June 19 issues, discovered: "All three news
magazines completely ignored any reference to a renter on Gore's family
property calling him a 'slumlord' over inattention to the house's
crumbling condition. At least U.S. News did mention, albeit briefly, the
disappearance of more than a year of subpoenaed Gore e-mails announced
last week."

Other items in the
MagazineWatch complied by Ken Shepherd and Tim Graham:
-- U.S. News and Time's Internet edition decried the
"cascading perversions" of campaign-finance law. Both condemned
advertising by groups the media have dubbed the "527s," and
lobbied for Congress to close these latest legal loopholes.
-- Time's Jessica Reaves explored the meaning of
approving estate tax cuts: "The rich may be poised to get a whole lot
richer -- and congressional Democrats could be staring at an election year
gold mine."
-- The news magazines could be worse. In the June
edition of Vogue, Julia Reed smothered Al Gore with affection: "When
Senator Gore lost anyway, he famously vowed that 'the truth will rise in
Tennessee,' and it did, in 1976, when the 28-year-old Al Gore ran for
and won his father's old seat in the House of Representatives."

"Critics
say it's one more sign this gathering of believers is bent on
exclusion," declared CBS's Byron Pitts in a Wednesday night story
about how the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) passed resolutions on how
only men can be pastors and condemning homosexuality. FNC sent a
correspondent to the Orlando gathering and he also reported on the same
resolutions, but only after pointing out how Baptist leaders condemned
Bill Clinton and Al Gore for not being faithful to their religion.

CNN's The World Today
also carried a full story on the convention by Mark Potter. He didn't
mention the condemnation of Bill Clinton, but in relaying the resolutions
on women as pastors and homosexuality he avoided CBS's loaded language
about intolerance.

Byron Pitts began his
June 14 CBS Evening News report:
"Their theme this year, Partners in the Harvest,
but [when] the Southern Baptist Convention voted, however, there was not
room in their field of faith for women pastors."
After a clip of a pastor saying only men can be
ordained, Pitts continued: "It's a limitation Reverend Julie
Pennington-Russell calls outrageous. She's one a handful of pastors of a
Southern Baptist Church."
Following a soundbite from Pennington-Russell, Pitts
highlighted the views of a gay activist: "Today's resolution also
included a statement on homosexuality. The SBC calls it a sin, critics say
it's one more sign this gathering of believers is bent on
exclusion."
Reverend Mel White of "Soul Force" got a clip
before Pitts gave the other side some time, but he challenged the
assessments of an advocate of the two resolutions: "Police arrested
gay rights demonstrators outside the convention. Still convention leaders,
like Reverend Paige Patterson, make no apologies."
Patterson, former President Southern Baptist
Convention: "Sin is sin and whenever we-"
Pitts: "Murder?"
Patterson: "Certainly."
Pitts: "Stealing?"
Patterson: "Certainly."
Pitts: "You equate those two things with
homosexuality?"
Patterson: "In terms of the fact that they all
fall in the category of sin, yes. You know if you fall in a swimming pool
it doesn't matter if you fall in the deep end or the shallow end,
you're still wet."
Pitts gave time to a third critic: "Reverend
Daniel Vestal, who started an organization of former Southern Baptist
churches, sees a problem in the SBC's theology."
Vestal, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship: "Baptists
look like they are no more because of what they are against, rather than
because of what they're for."
Pitts concluded: "With 15 million members
nationwide, the SBC concedes it could lose more followers over its new
policies. 'We are here to win souls,' said one member, 'not a
popularity contest.'"

Viewers of FNC's
Special Report with Brit Hume got a much different take on the convention.
Hume marveled:
"The President of the country's largest
protestant denomination is denouncing President Clinton and Vice President
Gore for not honoring their religious beliefs in office. Mr. Clinton has
been criticized before for his actions in the Monica Lewinsky case but
rarely in terms as strong as those used at the Southern Baptist Convention
meeting."

FNC's Bret Baier
opened his piece by showing Reverend Bailey Smith, in the "keynote
sermon," exclaiming from the stage: "We have a Southern Baptist
in the White House with the morals of an alley cat."
Baier also played this from Smith: "Everybody said
'Oh isn't it great to have a Southern Baptist in the White House.'
I'm ready for a Christian myself."
Viewers also heard the SBC's President, Reverend
James Merritt, tell Baier: "Clinton and Gore are Southern Baptists at
least in name only."

Wednesday
night ABC featured clips from an interview with Texas death row convict
turned anti-Bush/death penalty poster boy Gary Graham; a day after NBC
Nightly News ran a story CBS picked up on the "wilding" in
Central Park as Jim Axelrod actually acknowledged that some think the
police "were too lax with those gathered" for the Puerto Rican
Day parade because they did not want "to appear heavy-handed with
such an ethnic crowd"; and NBC reported on how the Gore camp wants
early debates in order to shake up the race because they are
"supremely confident that when debates finally happen their candidate
will prevail" on "maturity and experience."

The stock market scheme
arrests of organized crime figures topped the June 14 World News Tonight
on ABC and the NBC Nightly News while the CBS Evening News went first with
the talks between North Korea and South Korea. For the second night in a
row, all ran full stories on the nuclear data missing from Los Alamos.

-- ABC's World News
Tonight. Mike von Fremd narrated a piece about his interview with Gary
Graham, though he did point out that Graham, supposedly falsely convicted
for a murder at a grocery store, was also convicted of shooting two people
in other robberies, and he let Diane Clements of Justice for All warn that
if Graham is let out Texans better lock their doors. Von Fremd concluded:
"Gary Graham is one of the most activist inmates
on death row. He's calling for 10,000 people to gather outside the death
chamber to protest his execution. He's become part of the great
debate."

Only because the
national media have taken up his cause.

"Death Penalty
Study: A Left-wing Scam," declared the headline over a
frontpagemag.com piece, brought to my attention by a reader, on the death
penalty study promoted by all the networks Monday night. In the June 12
Web site piece David Horowitz undermined the premise of those stories
recounted in the June 13 CyberAlert:

On the front page of your paper this
morning (June 12) you will find the latest left-wing academic-political
scam, a Columbia University "study" of the death penalty which
purports to show that "the system is broken."

Naturally the left-wing media (the New York
Times, the LA Times, etc.) is presenting this political scam as solid
evidence that 1) there are vast miscarriages of justice in death penalty
cases and 2) George Bush is a heartless Republican. The New York Times'
headline goes like this: DEATH SENTENCES BEING OVERTURNED IN 2 OF 3
APPEALS. WIDE REACHING STUDY. REVERSALS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO ERRORS BY
DEFENSE LAWYERS, POLICE AND PROSECUTORS.

Nonsense. What the report actually does is
to take the record of anti-death penalty appeals court judges who
overturned sentences mainly for political reasons and then to present
these statistics as though they reflected what would have been actual
miscarriages of justice had the sentences been carried out.

For example, the Report records that 87% of
the death penalty cases in California between 1973 and 1995 were
"reversed." The implication is that the death sentences were
wrongly imposed. But this is far from the truth. What these reversals
represent is a political campaign by the left to subvert the death penalty
- the law be damned. No one was executed in California after 1973
(Governor "Moon Beam" Jerry Brown was elected in 1972), until
the anti-death penalty chief justice of the California Supreme Court
(appointed by Brown) was removed....

-- CBS Evening News.
Tuesday night CNN's The World Today and the NBC Nightly News ran pieces
on the Central Park "wilding" and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
discussed it on Wednesday's Today. CBS caught up Wednesday night, but
ABC's World News Tonight has yet to air a story on the incident which is
filling hours on the cable news channels.

Anchor Dan Rather
introduced the CBS story: "Police here in New York City, criticized
in the past for overreacting in tense situations, are now under fire for
allegedly under-reacting, being too blase, too passive. An investigation
is underway to determine if police did ignore pleas from victims of a
so-called 'wilding,' savagery in which thugs went on a rampage in
Central Park."

Over amateur video, Jim
Axelrod opened by focusing on complaints about police inaction when told
men were tearing the clothes off innocent women in the park. He linked
that to killings: "So once again New York's police department is
under fire. This video joins a recent catalog of images surrounding
allegations of police brutality and insensitivity towards minorities. But
this time there's a twist. Some New Yorkers are wondering if the police
were too lax with those gathered here in Central Park for the Puerto Rican
Day parade -- not wanting to appear heavy-handed with such an ethnic
crowd."
David Grandison: "Their reaction was no reaction.
They really just stood there"
Axelrod: "David Grandison was there Sunday
shooting this home video."
Grandison, who himself is black, recounted: "It
seemed to me like, 'hey they're minorities, let them do what they
want, let them go wild. You know we don't care, we're just going to
let them do their thing.'"
New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir
countered: "That's just nonsense. We police all our parades exactly
the same."
Axelrod concluded: "Tonight the police
commissioner says the focus belongs on the thugs who did this. Some
victims say police should have done more to stop it and some cops on the
beat say they're damned if they do, damned if they don't."

-- NBC Nightly News.
Lisa Myers used Ted Forstman's promise, of $500,000 each to Gore and
Bush for the charity for their choice if they agree to a debate on
education, as a hook for a look at how each camp views debates. Bush wants
to wait until the fall and then look presidential while Gore wants to
debate during the summer in order to shake up the race and to get debates
in before the Olympics and World Series crowd out politics. Myers
concluded: "Tonight, Bush advisers say they've not totally ruled
out early debates. The Gore camp claims to be supremely confident that
when debates finally happen their candidate will prevail -- not
necessarily on charm, but on maturity and experience."

NBC
and CBS picked up Tuesday night on Al Gore's "progress and
prosperity" tour. NBC's Claire Shipman did not challenge the
premise that Gore deserves credit for the economy and in a list of Gore
campaign problems she skipped e-mail and his Tennessee tenants, which I
guess really aren't problems since the networks have made sure no one
knows about them, but she did admit that "with big government
surpluses predicted it's tough...for Gore to argue against a Bush tax
cut."

CBS's John Roberts
allowed Gore to tout himself, but unlike Shipman, Roberts raised questions
about how much credit Gore deserves: "New York Governor George Pataki
claims Al Gore had little to do with the economic turnaround; it was
old-fashioned American hard work, fueled by tax cuts."

Anchor Tom Brokaw
introduced the June 13 NBC Nightly News story: "And the new, kinder,
gentler Vice President Al Gore tonight is starting a new phase of his
campaign, promoting the economic record of the last eight years. His
series of speeches coincide with the news that the federal surpluses are
greater than ever."

Claire Shipman agreeably
began: "After a year of fits and starts, wardrobe changes and
personality makeovers, today, Al Gore comes back to the obvious: the
economy. Standing with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, he claims
prosperity as his major campaign advantage."
Gore: "None of this happened by accident. It
happened because, together with the American people, we put in place a
brand new economic strategy."
Shipman: "Gore aides brag they've spent, quote,
'a fortune' on polling and research to figure out how Gore can make
the economy a winning issue."
Bill Carrick, Democratic strategist: "They're
trying to make a case that the stewardship of the economy for the last
eight years has been pretty strong, and 'Stick with us, and we'll make
even more progress.'"
Shipman rued: "Sounds simple, but experts say
prosperity helps George W. Bush, too. With big government surpluses
predicted, it's tough, for example, for Gore to argue against a Bush tax
cut. But in an interview today, the Vice President still calls Bush
fiscally irresponsible."
Gore: "Well, he has overshot even the largest
estimates of what the surplus will be."
Shipman: "Gore and his advisers are hoping that
focusing on the booming economy will put his campaign back on firm ground.
A lot of this spring was marred by internal sniping, clumsy moves on Elian
Gonzalez, a negative campaign style that the Vice President now calls a
mistake and a drop in the polls. In fact, Gore's been so frustrated that
in the last two weeks, he's shaken up his campaign team yet again, adding
a new high-level manager, tripled the size of his staff, hired Clinton's
record-breaking money man Terry McAuliffe to run the convention and
launched a $25 million DNC-sponsored ad campaign."

Shipman concluded:
"Gore will spend the coming months pitching his theme of economic
prosperity to a public that everyone agrees isn't paying much attention
yet. And he's well aware if he can't get people to focus on their wallets,
he'll have a hard time coming up with a better theme."

Over on the June 13 CBS
Evening News anchor Dan Rather announced the Gore strategy: "The U.S.
economy has run so strong for so long, some Americans may take it as a
given. And the Gore for President campaign feels the Vice President is not
getting any of the credit and that he deserves some. So the Gore campaign
is making this its latest selling point in what could be make-or-break
industrial states on Election Day. CBS News chief White House
correspondent John Roberts has more on the Gore strategy and the Bush
camp's reaction to it."

Roberts explained:
"It brought him the vice presidency in 1992, yet it was only this
week that Al Gore's campaign woke up and realized, despite unprecedented
economic growth, it's still the economy, stupid."
Craig Crawford, Hotline newsletter: "The good news
for Al Gore is the economy's booming. The bad news, he doesn't get the
credit for it."
Gore in speech: "America has done well. But I'm
here today to tell you, you ain't seen nothing yet."
Roberts elaborated: "So today, he kicked off a
cross-country prosperity tour in key battleground states to throw a
spotlight on his administration's economic record. Over the next three
weeks, he'll detail new proposals to save Social Security and Medicare,
but most importantly, Gore will talk about how he would keep the
prosperity going."

After another Gore
soundbite Roberts allowed Bush backers to respond: "For their part,
the Bush campaign is ridiculing Gore's tour, saying he is now laying claim
to having invented prosperity. And in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania,
Republican governors complain the Vice President is bragging on himself
just a little too much."
Gore: "We turned this great state around."
New York Governor George Pataki: "You know, I
don't take offense so much as it makes me kind of laugh."
Roberts: "New York Governor George Pataki claims
Al Gore had little to do with the economic turnaround; it was
old-fashioned American hard work, fueled by tax cuts, a formula embraced
by George W. Bush."
Pataki: "I think to continue this prosperity, we
have to have additional tax cuts in Washington. We can't just sit back and
go on a victory tour, as Al Gore is doing, and say, 'Look at how
prosperous we are.'"
Roberts concluded: "It is crucial for Gore to
capture some of the credit. Recent polls show the majority of Americans
think George W. Bush would take better care of the economy. And if history
is any guide, the candidate who wins on the economy wins the White
House."

But, of course, winning
the economy really means winning the media to your side to portray the
economy as booming and give you credit for it, and Gore's got a lot
better chance of doing that than does Bush.

Wacky
spin of the week. Here's how Tom Brokaw introduced a June 12 NBC Nightly
News story: "And from the U.S. Supreme Court tonight a ruling that
further restricts patient rights as they attempt to deal with their
HMOs."

The court just refused
to expand rights by rejecting a call for creating a new right to sue HMOs
in federal court, so hardly a "restriction" of anything since,
as Yogi Berra could have said, the status quo remains unchanged. -- Brent Baker

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